Torn with grief; Turning back to life: VaYeshev 5779

The most primal ritual of grief in our tradition is the rending of garments. The word “rending” is too pretty for the violent tearing of fabric with its distinctive sound and sensation. And the timid substitution of ripping a centimeter of black ribbon is far from the original concept. If you want to know what is intended by kriah, the tearing of one’s garments, just look at Genesis 37: 29-35.

When Reuben realizes that Joseph is gone, he tears his garments and says something incoherent to his brothers, literally, “the child is not, and I, where am I going”? A few verses later it is Jacob who receives the terrible news about his beloved son and immediately tears his garments, putting on a sack, and mourning Joseph “for many days.” In truth, he will never stop.

After the calamity and their dramatic responses of tearing clothes, Reuben and Jacob are never again quite the same. Reuben has lost his leadership, and the one time he tries to advise his father (42:37), his idea is foolish and is ignored by his father. Jacob will be bitter until the end.

The tearing of garments is not only a symbol of grief. It indicates something much deeper, like a wound, a gaping hole in the soul. Indeed, when the Talmud seeks to define mental illness, using the category of shoteh, the sages offer three symptoms—a person who wanders alone at night, who sleeps in a cemetery, and who tears their garments. When a mourner tears garments in response to the death of a relative, it is as if to say, “I am crazy with grief, don’t try to talk with me, because I am not me without them.” Halakhah stipulates that a mourner must tear a least a hand-breadth of cloth in their garment—front and center, starting from the throat and down to the heart—as a way of acting out their grief.

In Leviticus 10:6, Moses tells Aaron and his remaining sons not to tear their garments in grief over Nadav and Avihu. In Bavli Moed Katan 15a the Rabbis teach, “A mourner must tear garments, for when the Torah said to Aaron’s sons “do not tear,” this implies that in all other cases one must do so.” Mishnah Moed Katan 3:7 declares that one rends garments only for their immediate relatives, but the Talmud there states that “anyone present when the soul departs must rend their garments, because when a person dies, it is like a Torah scroll burning.” This leads the Sages there to say that whenever one hears about the death of a teacher or a great sage, they should tear garments.

The great medieval rabbi of Girona Nachmanides wrote an entire treatise on sickness and mourning called Torat HaAdam. In his discussion of the laws of kriah he understands the comparison of a dead person to a burnt Torah scroll in two ways. First, just as the scroll has letters on a parchment, so a person has a soul in a body—both components are necessary for life, and their separation is a tragedy. Second, the Torah contains commandments in written form; a Jew is like commandments in action. When we witness the destruction of one or the other, we tear our garments.

Today relatively few people perform this ritual as fully as the codes suggest. We are told also to tear the garment whenever we see Jerusalem or other Jewish cities in ruins, and I think in hindsight that we ought to consider this ritual when we learn of communal tragedies. When I heard about the massacre in Pittsburgh, I was in synagogue in Michigan. I felt myself swooning, learning hard against a door frame. Had it not been Shabbat, then I might well have torn my garment. This is the way that a Jew expresses grief. It is a moment of madness, of shock, of disregard for consequences since so much has been lost.

Not all is lost in grief, however. The grieving process itself can be understood as redemptive. Rabbi Yaakov ben Asher has a beautiful brief line in his discussion of Kriah (Tur, OH 340), “Whenever one sheds tears for a proper person, The Holy One gathers them in God’s treasury.” Good grief is an expression not only of loss but also of love, and it sets an example of the sanctity of life. Tearing cloth for a loss reminds how hard we must work to stitch our lives together. And when we arrive at a time of renewal, it makes our celebration that much sweeter.

Hanukkah is not a festival of dedication, but rather of re-dedication. The fact that the Temple had been desecrated was like a deep tear/tear (a suggestive homonym) in the Jewish soul. Its re-dedication is a miracle—the miracle of return from the brink, of strength, of joy and of peace. As we turn from Shabbat to Hanukkah this coming week, let’s remember the sorrow and the loss that began the story, the strength and courage that were expressed by our ancestors, and the faith that ultimately our tears will turn to joy, our sackcloth replaced by glorious garments (Psalm 30). So it was then, and so may it be at this time and in this place.